Conventionally, as recording apparatuses capable of performing printing on various types of recording media including plain printing paper, ink jet recording apparatuses are known. An ink jet recording apparatus jets ink being a coloring material from nozzles provided through a surface of a recording head directly onto the recording medium, the surface facing the recording medium, thereby the ink lands on the recording medium, and soaks into or gets fixed onto the medium. Thus, the ink jet recording apparatus forms an image onto the recording medium. Ink jet recording apparatuses are quite excellent in simplicity of process, quietness in printing, and the quality of printing text and images.
Recently, an ink jet recording apparatus can form an image, not only on a plain paper sheet, but also on various recording media having no ink absorbance or quick-dryability, allowing it to use recording media of a material more stretchable than conventional media, wherein a UV-ray curable ink is employed, which is capable of reducing negative effects of stretchability and forms images with high quality.
As a method for storing ink, an ink tank with a structure being attachable and detachable has been developed (for example, Patent Document 1). An ink tank employed in the invention disclosed in Patent Document 1 has a connector formed of an elastic body, and has a mechanism for closing a penetration hole by penetration of a tube connecting section in a needle shape through the connector, thereby preventing ink leakage from the ink tank during removing the ink tank.
[Patent Document 1] TOKKOHEI No. 2-40508
However, ink that adheres to the tube connecting section after removing the ink tank, not only causes ink dropping, but also causes fixing of the ink to the tube connecting section, if the ink is left as it is. Thus, joint between the tube connecting section and an ink tank at the time of mounting the ink tank is degraded each time the ink tank is replaced, which causes leakage of ink due to connection failure or supply failure of ink due to clogging with ink. Particularly, UV-ray curable ink used in recent years has high viscosity at ordinary temperature and a property of adhesion when exposed to light such as UV-ray. Therefore, if ink is left in the state of adhering to a tube connecting section, subsequent problems such as leakage of ink easily occur.